A Student's Guide to the Mathematics of Astronomy

This is a good book for people who have an interest in the math of astronomy. You don’t have to be a math major to understand the concepts.

I am a "senior" self-learner. Most astrophysics textbooks are meant for a college classroom, which will have a professor to answer questions. That is not my circumstance, so the books are an awkward fit. Often the books leave out several math steps or, even more annoying, leave out the math entirely and leave it to the student "as an exercise." This book fills in those gaps. I found it to be very helpful. It shows all of the math. The one thing the book does not cover is the math for binary stars. I wish it did. I was watching a video on the topic by Prof. Winn. He is a great lecturer, but often makes leaps on math, or just leaves out details. This was particularly frustrating with eclipsing binary stars, where he left out any number of steps. For example, at one point he threw in a unit vector for r without explaining why or how it affects the math. Alas, I could not find the answer in this book either, but otherwise, it has been great.

This book is more of a companion to another book. You will need a real textbook to get into astrophysics, this book will only help you get into the mathematics and serve as a smaller reminder of the most important points. But as a smaller book it's great to keep your mind busy and amazed while commuting.

Livro muito bom para professores e estudantes terem uma ideia de como se utiliza a matemática nos temas da astronomia.

This is a great book that covers a surprising amount of astronomy using mathematics that, apart from the use of radians, does not go beyond GCSE level. I was pleasantly surprised that the author showed how to do meaningful calculations about topics like black holes and recession of galaxies without getting into calculus.The explanations of principles are good and clear. For me the explanations of calculations were more detailed than necessary but that’s fine: I skipped over many of them but others will find them helpful.Hints and full solutions are on the accompanying web-site. Those for the end-of-chapter exercises are conveniently grouped in .pdfs. Those for the in-chapter problems are separate and split into parts a, b, c etcetera, which for me, often on a phone in a café with dodgy wifi, seemed to take a long time and a lot of clicks to access. Still, the most important thing is that there are solutions to all the problems, with working not just answers, and none of this “answers to even numbers only” nonsense that some authors inflict on us self-study students.The book, and the solutions, have been carefully proof-read. I found only one mistake in the online solutions, a tiny one, and when I pointed it out to the author he corrected it immediately.Most users of this book will be juggling the book, pencil, paper, calculator and a phone or tablet for looking up astronomical data and checking their answers. Is it too much to ask that the publisher make this easier by providing a spiral binding?I got a lot of pleasure from reading this book and working the problems. It’s inspired me to follow up with a more advanced astronomy book.